Many well-intentioned and patriotic Americans, including
progressives and liberal Democrats, have expressed opposition to
the idea of impeaching President Bush, arguing that it is a
diversion from more important issues like ending the war in
Iraq, or taking effective action on climate change.

Their concern is understandable, as these are indeed important
issues, but they are wrong. Fortunately, House Judiciary Chair
John Conyers, who knows this, is beginning the impeachment
process next week by calling for a hearing to examine one of the
president’s crimes: abuse of power. Fortunately too, several
state legislatures in places as disparate as New Mexico, Vermont
and Washington, are considering passing resolutions calling on
the House to initiate impeachment hearings.

There are important reasons why this president must be impeached
and they include those very urgent issues that people are afraid
will be shunted aside by an impeachment battle.

The key reason this president must be impeached is that his
offenses against the Constitution and the nation are so serious
that the very survival of Constitutional government and the
separation of powers on which it is based are at risk.

Let’s take the war in Iraq. The president clearly lied and
tricked both the Congress and the American people into allowing
him to invade that country. He and Vice President Dick Cheney
carefully cherry-picked half-truths and known falsehoods to lay
out as “evidence” that Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear
weapons and that he was in league with Osama bin Laden. His
White House orchestrated a campaign to damage the reputation of
an honest critic, ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had discovered
that a key piece of that “evidence” --some alleged documents
from the country of Niger--had been forged, and even “outed”
Wilson’s CIA-agent wife. These lies have led directly to the
pointless deaths of nearly 3100 American men and women in
uniform and to the deaths of perhaps hundreds of thousands of
innocent Iraqi men, women and children. Bush also illegally
pulled American troops and equipment out of Afghanistan, right
at the height of a Congressionally authorized campaign to
capture or kill bin Laden and his Al Qaeda organization (fatally
crippling that effort), and sent them to the border of Iraq in
preparation for his war there.

If this president is allowed to do such things, unchallenged and
unpunished, we can expect subsequent presidents to do so in the
future. Indeed, many experts and members of Congress believe
that Bush is getting close to repeating this criminal behavior
himself, this time with an unprovoked attack on Iran. Clearly,
in order to stop such abuse of presidential authority and such a
second national and international disaster, Congress will have
to impeach the president.

Then there’s the so-called “signing statements.” These are the
letters--not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution--which Bush
and his crony attorneys in the White House and Justice
Department claim allow him to invalidate all or part of any bill
passed by the Congress. Bush has used signing statements to do
this over 1200 time during his presidency, for everything from
refusing to accept a Congressional ban on torture to giving
himself the power, in clear violation of federal law, to monitor
first- class mail.

Once again, if this president is not impeached for this outrage
assertion of presidential absolute power, all future presidents
will feel free to do the same thing, simply ignoring acts of
Congress. The Constitution is crystal clear on this matter:
Article I says “All legislative powers granted herein shall be
vested in Congress of the United States," and Article II says
the president “shall take care that the laws be faithfully
executed.” Note that the Constitution does not say that “some”
legislative powers or “most” legislative powers are vested in
the Congress. It says “all.” Nor does it say that the president
shall execute “some” of the laws. For Congress to let this
blatant abuse of power to go unpunished would be to leave future
Congresses as little more than vestigial debating societies.

As for the warrantless spying which the president has authorized
the National Security Agency to engage in since the fall of
2001, in blatant violation of the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act, here is a case of the president
unapologetically violating federal law and committing a felony.
He is, here, simply daring the Congress to confront him. So far,
they have been too cowardly to stand up to the challenge. And
yet, if Bush is allowed to get away with this crime, all future
presidents will argue that they too are above the law, and that
they may pick and choose what laws they will honor and what laws
they will break. No Constitutional system, no democratic system,
can long endure under such circumstances.

The same can be said for the president’s willful violation of
the Geneva Conventions barring torture. It is clear that the
president both authorized torture, as defined under the
Conventions, and failed to take action to prevent even the most
heinous of torture acts, which reached the point of lethality,
when they were brought to his attention. These, it must be
pointed out, are not merely crimes which violate international
law. The US is a signatory (and author) of the Geneva
Conventions, and as these have been adopted by the Senate, under
the Constitution they have full force of law within the U.S.
Furthermore, the Republican Congress in 1996 specifically
incorporated the Geneva Code into the U.S. Criminal Code, making
it all the more clear that the president’s actions—and his
inaction—on torture are criminal acts under U.S. law. As such
they must be prosecuted, if the law is to have any meaning, and
that requires, as a first step, impeachment of the president.

There are many other reasons that the president should be
impeached--his criminal negligence in sending American troops
into battle with inadequate armor, his criminal negligence in
failing to plan for the occupation of Iraq, his extreme criminal
negligence in failing to act to rescue the trapped and drowning
citizens of New Orleans following the landfall of Hurricane
Katrina, his refusal to provide evidence requested by the 9-11
Commission (and his administration’s lies to that commission),
the massive and unchecked corruption in Iraq which has so
extravagantly enriched administration campaign contributors,
White House corruption linked to the Abramoff and other
scandals, illegal use of taxpayer funds for a program of
administration propaganda using government agencies, and perhaps
an orchestrated campaign of stealing elections, etc. These
should all be investigated. Some are easier to document than
others, but all deserve a hearing.

Meanwhile, however, it is essential that the key crimes be
introduced as bills of impeachment in the House as quickly as
possible, so that hearings can begin.

Critics of impeachment have argued that it is pointless to call
for impeachment since removal from office would require a vote
by two-thirds of the Senate, which is 49 percent Republican.
That ignores the impact of truth and fact on a group of
politicians who will be looking at 2008 very anxiously. When
impeachment hearings began for President Richard Nixon, a scant
one in four Americans thought he should be impeached. During the
Clinton impeachment farce, support for the president’s removal
from office never topped 36 percent. Yet a Newsweek poll taken
last fall found that a remarkable 51 percent of the American
public felt this president should face impeachment (including 29
percent of Republicans!), and than only 44 percent opposed
impeachment.

The likelihood is that, once impeachment hearings began, they
would have the same impact on Republicans this time around as
they had on Republicans in Congress during the Nixon
impeachment. That is, as the depth of administration perfidy and
criminality was exposed on live television, through the
testimony of White House staff talking under oath, honest
Republicans facing re-election soon would feel compelled to cut
their ties and support for Bush and his cronies. Who knows? Some
might even support impeachment for reasons of principle and
patriotism as the facts came out.

The real reason Bush must be impeached, though, is that if he is
not impeached, this usurper will simply ignore any bills passed
by Congress, will act despite any resolutions passed by
Congress, and will break any law that he thinks gets in his way.
Furthermore, future presidents, Democrat and Republican, will
use Bush as a precedent to ignore Congress and break laws
themselves.

Here are some excerpts from the new book, The Case for
Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W.
Bush from Office, written by Dave Lindorff and Barbara
Olshansky, released May 1 by St. Martin's Press.
http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/id16.html